Building World-Changing Products, Vision and Success | Inventor of the iPod, Tony Fadell
Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais
Dr. Michael Gervais
4.6 • 1.8K Ratings
🗓️ 16 November 2022
⏱️ 81 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week’s conversation is with Tony Fadell, an entrepreneur, designer, engineer, and investor with a 30+ year history of founding companies and designing some of the most influential products of the 20th century.
Over his remarkable career, Tony has become best known as the inventor of the iPod, the iPhone, and the Nest Thermostat (which eventually sold to Google for $3.2B).
Tony has authored more than 300 patents and was named one of Time's "100 Most Influential People in the World". In 2016, Time also named the iPod, the iPhone, and the Nest Learning Thermostat as three of the “50 Most Influential Gadgets of All Time".
Tony also recently published his first book, Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making, which quickly topped charts as a bestseller.
Tony is a legend, and it was a joy to learn from him in this conversation. I think everyone will find significant value from the insights Tony shares as he outlines his journey from devastating failure to unbelievable success, and some of the lessons he learned along the way.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | So you don't just build a product or you don't just build a service but you build a mentality, |
| 0:05.1 | a mindset, a way of working and a network of people like that so you can continue generation after |
| 0:11.7 | generation to do that. To me, that's your soul. I don't believe in the ethereal soul. I believe your |
| 0:18.6 | soul is what you plant in each person on this planet and they remember you even when you're gone |
| 0:24.2 | and they live and take those things that you imparted to them and build on top of it |
| 0:30.0 | and instill it into the next generations and the next generations and the next generations. |
| 0:34.2 | That is a person's soul. |
| 0:44.8 | Okay, welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast and your host, Dr. Michael Jervé, |
| 0:50.7 | a trade-in training, a high-performance psychologist. And today, I am excited to sit with Tony Fadel. |
| 0:58.7 | Tony is an entrepreneur, designer, engineer, and investor with 30-year history of founding |
| 1:04.5 | companies and designing some of the most influential products of the 20th century. |
| 1:10.2 | And that is not an easy feat. We're going to understand how that happens, who he is, |
| 1:14.8 | the principles that live just underneath the surface of how he's made choices in his life and |
| 1:20.7 | Tony. I've been following you from your and your work from a distance. I've been consuming just |
| 1:25.6 | about all of the products I think that you've made and I'm really excited to sit with you. |
| 1:31.6 | Michael, it's great to be here. Thanks for having me on. I'm excited for this conversation |
| 1:35.6 | and hopefully your audience gets something out of it. Really, really, really anxious to be on. |
| 1:41.5 | I think that what you just said, I hope somebody gets something out of it. I feel like that is |
| 1:47.5 | right at the heartbeat of your purpose right now, is passing a baton, is a phrase that |
| 1:53.2 | I read in your book that's meaningful to you. And so you have been wildly successful in your |
| 1:59.5 | career, but it's clear that it didn't happen overnight in your words. And you've held significant |
| 2:05.6 | leadership positions across at least seven different companies that I'm aware of. And then you |
... |
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